It was Grumgra's voice that next made itself heard. "Mumlo speaks well," the leader acknowledged, leaning meditatively upon his club, as though he had forgotten its aggressive purposes. "Mumlo speaks well—it is true that we are getting fewer and fewer, for the great frosts are more than our people can stand, and when the winter comes the wild beasts seize us, or else some evil spirit creeps near, and we sicken and die. We do not wish to leave this cave, where our fathers and their fathers and their fathers before them have lived—but is it not better to go from our home than to perish?"
Having reached a bellowing climax, Grumgra paused as if to allow his words time to penetrate. There followed a frightened silence, broken now by a whispered exclamation of dread, now by a muttered oath of horror; and this awed speechlessness continued even after Grumgra had shouted his last words, "What do you say, my people? Tell me, what do you say?"
For a moment no one said anything at all. And, after a few seconds' silence, Grumgra lifted his club in a fresh gesture of command.
But at this point, interruption came from an unexpected quarter. Out of the shadows to the rear a slender form drew forward; and one of the younger tribesmen—scarcely more than a boy, he seemed—raised his voice in a manner that compelled attention.
"Let me speak, O chief," he cried, in deep tones almost musical beside those of his fellows. "Let me speak a very little!"
A scowl came over the dark face of the leader. His right arm drew back as if to wield the club and crush the intruder.
"What? You speak, Ru?" he roared, derisively. "You, Ru the Sparrow-Hearted?" And into the jet-like eyes came a hard light as of disdain tinged with anger and hatred.
"Yes, O chief, I ask to speak," affirmed Ru, coming forward with a boldness that seemed to belie his name. And placing himself directly before the chieftain, well within range of the club, he stood like a deliberate challenge between Grumgra and the people.
A greater contrast than the two men presented could hardly have been imagined—at least, not in those primeval days. Physically Ru was slight as his opponent was gigantic; he stood scarcely over five feet in height; and his frame, while well knit and evidently equipped with strong and flexible muscles, had none of Grumgra's gorilla-like amplitude, but was slender as a sapling and had apparently been designed for grace rather than for power. At a single stroke, Grumgra might have crushed and mangled him like a fly—yet the difference between the two men was not wholly physical. For there was something about Ru's face which seemed to atone for that which his body lacked. Like Grumgra, he had the characteristic hairy features, the characteristic eyebrow ridge, tapering cheek-bones and massive jaws of his tribe; but, unlike Grumgra, he seemed to possess some indefinable quality that tempered his inherent brutishness. His forehead did not recede like those of his tribesmen, but was straight and high as that of a modern; his face was long and sagacious-looking, and his head unusually capacious; while his eyes—queer anomaly among that dark-pigmented race!—were not black like those of all the other Umbaddu, but gleamed shrewdly with a steel-gray glint!
And with a courage unique among the Umbaddu, those gray eyes firmly met the black ones of the chieftain. Perhaps it was the very audaciousness of their gaze that restrained Grumgra, for his club, though half uplifted, did not descend upon the daring one; but in tones of irritation and contempt he muttered: "Then tell us, Ru! Tell us what you have to say! But tell us very quickly!"